


The Long Day Wanes

by divingforstones



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, M/M, Midsummer Night's Fluff, Poetry, Summer Solstice, longest day of the year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 11:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1816228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divingforstones/pseuds/divingforstones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"On the plus side, it turns out that if you had to pick an isolated spot to break down in, then the cliff top above a slowly surging sea, very late on a summer’s evening, would be fairly near the top of Robbie’s list. Well, after a pub with a decent beer garden, of course." </i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A car breaks down and James can no longer avoid his inspector’s scrutiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Day Wanes

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Tennyson. Many thanks to wendymr for very helpful beta'ing.
> 
> There's a lot of quoting at the start of this but that's because James is refusing to use his own words.

“Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,

Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea…”

James is in a quoting mood.

They’re so effectively in the middle of nowhere that they’ve been told it may be hours before they’re rescued.

On the plus side, it turns out that if you had to pick an isolated spot to break down in, then the cliff top above a slowly surging sea, very late on a summer’s evening, would be fairly near the top of Robbie’s list. Well, after a pub with a decent beer garden, of course.

He leans back on his elbows on the car bonnet and looks sideways at his sergeant, who’s lying back, cigarette in hand, upper body as flat as he can get it, gazing up at the first stars appearing in a sky that’s still only a deepening shade of pale blue. James looks far more relaxed than Robbie’s seen him look in an age. Do him good to get away from it all for a while.

And this is rather nice. Soothing, he acknowledges to himself, after a day of jangled nerves and snapping at each other, and running themselves increasingly ragged straight into a dead-end of a wild-goose chase.

It’s reassuring, and somehow very restful, just to sit here with James now, far above the waves and beneath a huge dome of sky, and listen to that familiar voice play around with the words that must be floating through his ever-restless mind.

“The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;  
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep  
Moans round with many voices…”

“The long day wanes—I like that. Bloody long day too, wasn’t it?” The whole long, frustrating, weary futility of today certainly seems to be fading right away now. It feels like they’re in another place altogether, completely separate from the petty groundings of everyday life.

He doesn’t get a direct response. James gives a long sigh and starts again. Robbie suppresses a grin. No point trying to intervene when James is really off on one.

“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,  
Enwrought with golden and silver light,  
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths  
Of night and light and the half-light,  
I would spread the cloths under your feet…”

“Would you, lad?” says Robbie absently.

“But I, being poor, have only my dreams;  
I have spread my dreams under your feet;  
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t want to do that to your dreams now, sergeant.”

“But you do, sir. Pretty much all the time really.” There is absolutely no levity in James’s voice. Robbie half turns to look at him.

James, flat on his back, gazes straight up into the deepening blue of that sky.

“What did you just say?”

“Not your fault, sir,” James turns his head to give him a half-smile that makes no inroads on the look in his eyes. “But it’s true.”

“What d’you mean by that?” Robbie is disproportionately upset.

A moment ago, he’d thought that things were all right again at last. That they were finally, finally back in sync after the last while of—well, they’ve just been that bit out of step with one another in that way that’s not discernible or definable to anyone but themselves, but it makes Robbie feel thoroughly out of sorts when it happens, and the world somehow a less pleasant place.

Turns out you really don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

He knew that was true of the big things in life, obviously. He just didn’t realise it would apply to something so seemingly trivial as turning your head slightly to share the secret comedy of a moment with your sergeant and being met with a deliberately polite, blank expression instead of that answering flash of amusement.

Robbie felt like he’d been hit in the face himself, first time that happened. He needs to get a grip, he keeps telling himself that.

A moment ago he’d been feeling quite grateful that the car had spluttered to a halt. That after they had snapped and snarked respectively about the limitations of the other’s mechanical knowledge, and slowly come to accept that they were stuck here together for the foreseeable, the place that they were stranded in had begun to exert its influence.

And they’d settled back beside each other against the car bonnet as companionably as if they were drinking a beer on Robbie’s couch. Or—correction—how they used to drink a beer on Robbie’s couch. Because Robbie’s acutely aware that that hasn’t happened in a while. And it’s not for want of trying on his part.

And it’s fine, if the lad has found something better to do with his time off than sip pints with his boss. Or not fine, but something at least that Robbie can learn to live with. But James doesn’t strike him as someone who’s spending his leisure time in fulfilling or restful pursuits. He’s in a worse humour than ever any Monday morning when they’ve had the full weekend off, and he never looks rested.

Robbie’s probably not in the best of form himself, come Monday. Thankfully, work has a habit of taking over.

They’re only at their best these days when they’re engrossed in a case and batting ideas back and forth, chasing down leads, communicating and reading each other in ways that are blatantly obvious to them and indecipherable to suspects and chief superintendents, and just being the two of them against the rest of the world.

When there’s nothing else to follow up for that day, and if Robbie makes a clumsy attempt— _Pint?_ —then the shutters come right back down and he feels like he’s back to square one. Just like now.

He’d thought things were somehow getting back to normal. He can’t believe they’re not. Fighting with James—even if Robbie has no sodding clue what they’re fighting about—throws his world off balance.

“My words fly up, my thoughts to heaven go. Words without thoughts—"

Oh, bloody hell. “ _Stop_ it. I want to hear what you’ve got to say about this, not the flaming bard!”

“Ah, his lesser known canon of incendiary works, sir.”

And this, _this_ is why Robbie has got precisely nowhere sorting this out before now—stonewalled by witticisms at every turn. James has been using them to push distance between them lately instead of to lightly convey his meanings to Robbie when he doesn’t quite want to own his own words.

It’s completely wrong-footed Robbie, having James’s smartarsery really used against him, to warn him off instead of to let him in that little bit.

He’d eventually been forced to accept that he’d either have to wait until James let something slip, or came out of it himself. And then James would stop using words to push at Robbie, to goad him a bit and yet keep him back, keep him away. And things could go back to normal.

And now he discovers that the last peaceful hour, the content and desultory conversation that they’ve been having here on the cliff top, wasn’t normality restored at all, but prelude to—this. Whatever the hell this is.

“Is this about the job?”

Robbie’s sometimes uncomfortably aware that “If you go I go,” can also mean “If you stay I stay.” Maybe his sergeant wants out and is too loyal to leave. God knows the two of them are—entwined—at this stage. To the extent that Robbie can’t begin to fathom what it would actually be like to work with someone else any more. Spend long day after long day with someone who wasn’t James? Even the way things have been, that’s unimaginable. So he’s relieved to hear: “No, sir.”

“Is it just—today?” God knows he has been tetchy.

James sits up and rubs at his face with his hand. “No, it’s every day, really, sir,” he says feelingly.

“You’re finding me a bit lacking in—” Robbie stops, stricken. He knows he’s been sharper recently. It’s not wholly intentional, but it’s also just easier that way sometimes. Easier to let irritation override any other feelings. Particularly confusion.

He can’t really cope with the thought that he’s been upsetting James, though.

“You’re not a bit lacking in anything, sir. If anything, you’re too much. You make me want too much, anyway.”

The last part is delivered with the twist of mock irony that tells Robbie he’s hearing the real truth of the matter at long last. So it’s just unfortunate that it makes little sense. Because that’s apparently all Robbie’s getting. James is sitting perfectly still now, not looking at Robbie at all, just gazing out towards the horizon as if he neither requires nor expects a response. He looks sort of defeated. It makes Robbie want to reach out and turn James’s head back towards him, make James look at him so they can just sort this out. Make him stop looking like that.

What does he mean, he wants too much? He’s the one who keeps turning down what Robbie is offering—avoiding their after-work pints and their evenings when James used to come over on some vaguely case-related pretext and just stay, sharing a drink, sharing a takeaway, sharing time with Robbie. He studies James, who still doesn’t look back at him, just silently submits to Robbie’s scrutiny.

The last time James had spent an evening at Robbie’s, after a rather disturbing, tough case—does all James’s recent reticence date from that? It hadn’t seemed to start just then, but then it had all developed so gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, that it was impossible to tell when it had quite begun, this slow withdrawal of James’s. Because something had happened that evening, from Robbie’s perspective, but he’d rather thought that James had missed that.

James had fallen asleep that evening on Robbie’s couch. Robbie, turning his head to make a comment on their background noise, the quiz programme that was playing unobtrusively on his television in the corner, had seen his sergeant had just silently drowsed off. It was dead nice to think he was relaxed enough to do that here, that relaxed with Robbie. The lad had had a rough week and he’d just kept on at it, without complaint, and kept quietly easing Robbie’s week too, despite his own burdens, in the little ways he always did.

So when James had started to slide down slowly, sideways, towards Robbie, Robbie had lifted his arm to the back of the couch and let him find rest for a while against Robbie’s own shoulder. He’d left his arm along the back of the couch, resisting the urge to drop it around James and pull him in a little, settle him a bit more against Robbie. He’d just sat and let him rest. And watched him a bit, sort of wondering—well, James just seemed so comfortable, so peaceful somehow, and he’d felt so warm and comfortable against Robbie too.

It was like the whole week they’d just struggled through together had somehow led to this.

By the time James finally awoke, Robbie’s own mind had quietened so much at last that he’d almost surrendered to sleep himself. And James, when he’d finally stirred, had at first settled himself in a little closer, muttering indecipherable things to himself, and raising a smile on Robbie’s face, unseen by his sergeant who was burying his head in a bit. Then he’d suddenly straightened, apologising immediately to Robbie. And headed off—well, of course, understandably wanting to get home for a proper kip in his own bed. But leaving Robbie rather wishing that James had just stayed—well, rather wanting more himself.

That’s not the sort of wanting more that James means, though, is it?

“The last time you were over at mine...”

“Yeah,” James says with a sigh, his whole demeanour suddenly confirming to Robbie that it _had_ mattered to him too, that accidental surrender he’d made towards Robbie, in his weariness. It wasn’t something he’d brushed off as quickly as he’d appeared to at the time. It had, in fact, led to all of this. This withdrawal from Robbie’s friendship because James—wanted more.

James flicks the glowing cigarette end away, angling his head away too to track its skittering progress on this deserted, one-track open road. “Never mind, sir, it’s nothing you can do anything about. Cross I have to bear and all that.”

Robbie gazes at him and wonders just how long this has been going on. Even before that night for James? Because, underneath it all, he looks bloody wretched. Well, Robbie can more than imagine why. Poor lad. Poor James. And Robbie’s a stupid bugger himself for not spotting it sooner. He’s been so disturbed by the little acts of distance that James has been pushing between them, so bloody stung by the way James has been politely, subtly, but very effectively pulling away from him, that he’d utterly failed to consider that this could be a cause. Which is a bit ruddy obtuse of him, all things considered.

“You should’ve said sooner.”

“I do feel a bit the better for it,” James concedes, lying back down on the bonnet. “It’s just—it’s going to be bloody weird working with you, sir, after this.”

“What if it was—all right?” Robbie looks up at the stars himself, appearing with dizzying rapidity now, as he tries the question out.

“You can go back in on Monday morning and pretend like nothing’s been said, can you?” James gives him another smile that really tries quite hard this time. “Thanks, but I’m not sure that’s quite going to suffice.”

“No— forget the job—look, what if it was—all right?”

Silence.

He turns his head to look down at his sergeant and, despite the growing shadows now, he can see quite clearly that James looks dazed. Starstruck, Robbie thinks inconsequentially. This is the one thing that, for all his analysing, he hadn’t figured out, the daft sod. He’s tormented himself looking at every bloody angle of this, and keeping Robbie desperately at a safe distance while he tries to talk himself out of it.

There’s going to be hell to pay with his back tomorrow, but Robbie lies down right beside his sergeant anyway. And immediately he can see why James chose to finally talk, in this position. The whole sky opens up above and around him. He becomes acutely aware of the quick, warm breathing of the man next to him. He turns his head to meet his gaze.

“You—”

“There are more things in heaven and earth, James Hathaway,” he murmurs, “Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

The flash of joyful disbelief in James’s eyes is his first reward. The unexpected heat of that first confusedly heady kiss that follows is the next one. Then a slightly dizzy Robbie Lewis eventually drops his head back down against the car bonnet again, for a brief breather, staying very close beside his sergeant, who’s just propped up on an elbow, grinning down at him in pure delight now. And it occurs to Robbie that there’s one more highly satisfactory benefit to this whole new wonderful arrangement.

He’s just found the most purely pleasurable method imaginable of shutting James Hathaway up.

**Author's Note:**

> James is quoting from John Keats’ _On The Sea_ , Alfred Tennyson’s _Ulysses_ , Wiliam Butler Yeats’ _He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven _, and William Shakespeare.__
> 
> _  
> _Robbie is taking a bit of poetic licence with Hamlet.__  
> 


End file.
